So what is the best microphone for your iPhone whether you’re live streaming or you’re shooting video I’m going to talk about three of the best options in this video hey what’s up guys sean here with thick media TV helping you go further faster in media on this channel we do tech gear reviews video audio things like that so if you’re new here consider subscribing and at any point during this video check out show notes and links in the description below I’ll list out all the mics and all the tech reviewed in the youtube description let’s get into the review so as you know you can record audio right off your smart phone but sometimes it’s not the best especially if you get further away so one of the best microphones for your iPhone well the first option is to pick out a lapel mic now lapel mic is a microphone that like clips on your shirt and that can give you some cord length so you can get a distance away from the phone so the first mic I would recommend is actually called the boya be ym1 microphone now couple features you’ll notice right away with this particular mic is that you get a ton of cord length in some cases it might be too much but maybe that’s something you’re looking for I have tested out some of the cheaper mics I’m not sure which one this is about ten bucks but one of the downsides is that the cable is so short and I’ll I’ll link it up still so you can research it in the youtube description but the boya is awesome because you get a ton of cord lengths and it sounds really good so check out how this boya mic sounds all right this is what the iPhone mic just on the camera sounds like with no mics plugged in at all okay here is the boya mic this is what it sounds like you can see this little adapter thing on it it has a place where you can flip it to camera so in smartphone mode it is turned off and this is what this lapel mic will get you and this mics 20 bucks now the other great thing about this boyo mic is it’s powered so it also sounds great if you use it for like a DSLR or some other application and so there’s a little switch on it so you can say off and that’s what’s what it is we need to plug it into your smart phone where you can turn it on if you plug it into like the audio port of a camera so that’s pretty cool now the sec lapel mic that I actually use most of the time it’s called the iRig mic laughs now this is a great mic the boy that was about $20 us the iRig is about $40 and it some plugs right into your phone works great sounds great and it actually for me is like the perfect chord length and so I use this mic a ton for Facebook live for periscopes and it’s kind of like my go-to mic and so check out how the iRig sounds okay now this is the iRig mic now this is the one that I like to use the most just because the cable length is about perfect to be doing Facebook lives consistent consistently I don’t you know want all of this extra cable again maybe you do and it’s not a huge deal you can smooth it out of the way but I do like this iRig it’s kind of my go-to mic comes with a cool case and this will run about $40 u.s.

Now one thing about the iRig mic is it actually does have a little plug in place where you could plug in a secondary mic and actually do two lapels off the one port but I found that that doesn’t work that great or sound that great and so if you can do more than one person wait for later in the video I’ve got better solutions for that and then the third recommendation would be the rode smartlav you’ve probably heard of that $80 now it’s pretty solid you know you’re going to get you know good audio with it but some of these other options go sound about the same and for $20 or $40 so definitely the smart lab but you know that roads quality is going to be solid so you could check that out now one thing I’ve heard about it is that that cable is kind of short so then you end up investing in an extension cable but I don’t know let me know if you know about that in the comment section below now the second kind of mic I’d recommend is a shotgun mic and this is also we talked about bringing multiple people on this is a great solution for that and so I would recommend the rode videomic me now this is a $60 microphone and it’s pretty great you can just plug it right into your phone like that and if you’re shooting on facebook live or something it can shoot kind of down you know and catch you or if you go sideways it’s going to work as well and so when I found with these mics that plug-in that are supposed to be directional kind of mics you don’t really want to cheap out on these there are some Amazon options whereas the lapels that are cheaper can actually be great if you get the right one the directional mics just usually are going to leave you wishing you know you didn’t waste your money so I think this is a great investment and this is a good solution for having maybe a couple people on camera so if you were to you know be doing a live stream and you had two people next to it or you wanted to let you know instead of doing a lapel mic option this would be a good way to go and if you’re by yourself as well so this is what the rode mic sounds like alright here we are this is the iPhone mic again so this is what it sounds like I’m about hmm you know two feet away from the phone itself and this is what it sounds like with the rode videomic me so this is the difference and what’s kind of cool is I guess if you could imagine maybe somebody’s here next to me we are doing two people on camera we’re about this far now we’re probably three four feet away from the actual mic itself okay and the third option is actually to use an adapter and so if you get this road TRS to trrs sc4 then you can take any mic that you currently have and use it on your iPhone now to over simplify things to determine whether or not it’s you know meant for the smartphone jack or for a headphone jack is a standard microphone is going to have two little black lines on it and that’s TRS and you’ll notice that like your headphones for your iPhone or whatever it’s going to have three lines on it and that’s trrs and so all this plug does and there are some you can definitely get some very much cheaper versions here for about $15 I think this is a good investment because again roads well built and then some of those other ones it’s like just get something that’s always going to work for you right and so for for $15 you could take any shotgun mic handheld anything you have if it’s the two black lines right and you just put this converter in and now you could plug this in to your iPhone or to your smartphone and benefit from the audio of any mic at all so that’s maybe one of the cheapest options and we’re shooting with the rode videomic pro right now in this video use that for Facebook live before if we also have multiple people on camera and it sounds amazing because you’ve got a great shotgun mic now that’s like a $200 shotgun mic but then we just use this little converter cable now similarly you might want to also get a rode sc3 because that converts the opposite way it goes from – to allowing you to use the three plug prong so for instance this little lapel mic here that’s intended for smartphones has the three black lines the SC three is going to turn that into the two black lines so you could plug this into your DSLR and use it and so these are probably two things you want to pick up just kind of for your kit in general depending on what kind of videos you’re creating if you’re doing both kind of smartphone and like DSLR type videos and you could adapt any mic that you want okay and then lastly this is the iPhone audio and so I’ve got my SC four right here and I’m just going to use this particular shotgun mic so obviously this is completely predicated upon you know what actual mic you use but just for example and I’m going to throw it up on this other tripod here and I’m gonna set it right next to the phone alright and here you go so now you could take a mic that you just have lying around and you could convert it to your phone and get more Pro Audio like this oh yeah and one more tip on that you might want to invest in how you’re gonna actually mount all of that stuff cuz you could take you know some piece like this mount your shotgun mic and then you’ve got your phone you know mounted as well with I unscrew that piece and put it on this thing and put that on a tripod not that you have to do all of that but again if you just kind of go through it I can link up some resources to a way that you would mount your mics if you were using an adapter and you know they’re not meant to just like clip right on your phone so you want to look into a solution for that question of the day what do you think the best microphone for iPhone or for smartphones is let me know in the comments section remember that some of the best tips and feedback comes from you the think media TV community so definitely connect with everybody in the comment section so thanks so much for checking out this video definitely subscribe for more videos just like this and also check out the playlist of all of my smartphone accessories videos I talk about lenses and cool smartphone tripods microphones all in one playlist so I’ll link that up on the YouTube card and if you haven’t downloaded the think media TV video gear buyer’s guide it’s a complete guide of actually all the lighting audio and cameras I recommend for making like YouTube videos so you can grab that as well everything linked up in the description or on the YouTube card until next time think media TV is help you go further faster in media keep crushing it and we will talk soon hey what’s up guys sean here and we are ready to drop the mic okay